Tag: Hull Tigers

Fan Friendly Prices

Fan Friendly Prices

We’re poised to embark on another exciting Premier League season. Our clubs are working hard to secure players in the transfer market, at the same time we lay down cash to keep our season tickets. For those that can’t make a season ticket viable, a quick look to the fixture list highlights months where savings are required in order to attend games. Financial Fair Play was all about making sure football was healthy. My disdain for the system has been duly noted before; today I take a glance at the cost for those attending games this season. Unsurprisingly it makes for disappointing reading. FFP hasn’t protected the game’s most important commodity: the fans. Nor has it managed fairness in FFP’s execution.

The Premier League’s latest television deal has been well documented. Dreams that the £5.5 billion would convert to cheaper tickets for fans was always folly. As we are so often reminded, football is big business now. For most it was a way to bridge a gap to the top guns whilst getting closer to FFP conformity. I won’t argue against large TV deals, if the product is worth that price – or more importantly, someone is willingly to part with that amount of cash – then the Premier League clubs should lap it up. I do take umbrage with the idea UEFA is trying to introduce a soft cap on wages by limiting loss and expenditure, but fails to introduce universal limits on tickets and merchandise prices.

This failure from UEFA allows some clubs to penalise fans without ever facing the wrath of FFP restrictions. The grey area of different countries having to pay more to players each month for tax purposes (a player in England is taxed higher than one plying his trade in La Liga, thus, to match his wage a Premier League club has to pay a higher basic) is one area UEFA have failed to address directly. I suppose arguments over tax havens are best left to Starbucks, Amazon, or Jimmy Carr. But a failure to impose sanctions on clubs overinflating ticket prices would be easy to amend.

I’m not naïve enough to suggest a newly promoted club should be charging the same as a regular top four side. Clearly the established top teams are providing a constantly higher standard of product. In tandem with this their facilities exceed expectations. However, should Arsenal be allowed to set their cheapest season ticket at £1,014 when Manchester City manages to offer one at £299? This is the same club that argued City received too much sponsorship money from Etihad, missing the point that a value is only what someone is willingly to pay, then counterargument there is a market for high valued tickets in London. It’s unfair to the loyal fans and makes an uneven playing field. All clubs are punished by the same quotas if they fail FFP but allowed to run wild in other areas.

The disparity between ticket prices is now alarming. Arsenal’s most expensive match day ticket will be £127 this year. That’s just for ninety minutes of football. Crazy. Liverpool also play in the Champions League, are a club with a loyal fan base and extensive support, but they will charge no higher than £75 for a match day ticket this season, £19 being their lowest match day offering. You can argue that if fans of the Gunners are willing to pay it the club should cash in, but that misses the point. Other clubs can generate funds from their resources but aren’t allowed because of FFP. Yet UEFA aren’t stopping clubs from raiding the pockets of the most vulnerable first.

Understandably, it’s two of the newly promoted teams that see the largest percentage increase in ticket prices, as they meet the higher wage demands and chase players better equipped for top flight football. Burnley and QPR see an increase of 37% and 38% respectively on their highest priced season tickets (this takes Burnley’s price to £685; QPR’s to a whooping £949), both their cheapest offerings come in at £499. A tip of the cap to the other new boys, Leicester City. They have only made a 3% increase to the lowest priced season ticket (now £365) and a 2% one to the highest priced (£730). It’s worth noting Hull’s increased prices. For a club that has been very vocal – almost, overly proud – regarding their pricing structure, they have jumped prices by 25%. However, there is only a seventy quid difference between their cheapest and most expensive offering. Nobody is paying more than £572 to watch The Tigers this season.

I paid £675 for my season ticket this year. Would I have liked it cheaper? Of course, wouldn’t we all? But I could afford it, and would rather choose my seat than take the £299 offer. The highest priced at the Etihad this season was £860. Sounds a lot, I suppose, but it is the home of the champions, and a club that has failed FFP, so is clearly on the limit when it comes to breaking even. All clubs can squeeze a bit more. For some, any rise will be a deal breaker, but I dare say the 10% rise seen on City’s highest priced season ticket could have been pushed to 15% and the uptake would have been the same. The club won’t win any awards for keeping prices reasonable but others won’t be chastised for the ludicrously high bars that have been set. Arsenal, who haven’t been champions of England since 2004, sell their highest-priced season ticket at £2,013. A mere 3% rise, showing that prices have been inflated for a long time there.

So clubs are free to inflate and flog the fans all they want. No governing body will step in and protect the working man. What adds a touch of humour to this is how the FFP fines are going to be redistributed among other clubs. To appease teams that have competed domestically with clubs that “cheated” FFP, any fines they incur will be spread out amongst the teams that played in the league during the season in question. So Arsenal is set to receive some money from Manchester City’s FFP fine, topping the coffers that are overflowing from exorbitant ticket prices. No consideration is given to making clubs redistribute this cash to ticket buyers. Nor is the spreading of this cash fair when you consider some clubs – like Liverpool, for example – also would have failed Financial Fair Play last season had they been competing in Europe. UEFA only audited the clubs that competed in the Champions League or Europa League, so not only have some teams dodged a bullet, they’ll get a cash reward from those as guilty as they are.

If UEFA don’t act now the ticket prices will continue to rise. The working class man at top flight games will become a thing of the past. Short of introducing a cap on prices – something impossible to implement without a hard cap on a salaries – then a system should be in place to reduce a percentage of final turnover in FFP workings if ticket prices exceed an agreed market value. If sponsorship deals have to be justified then so should the cash received from fans.

FFP hasn’t protected clubs from themselves; it’s just made them the most dangerous predators to the fans’ wallets.

We Need Our Christmas Crackers

We Need Our Christmas Crackers

A common remark made after England fail at a major tournament is that the Premier League should adopt the European approach of having a festive break. There have been, and will continue to be, lots of innovations and alterations to the modern game but this is one I’ll never take to. As a fan I love the crowded festive fixture list. I’d hate to see it removed for invalid reasons – let’s face it, one year off wouldn’t prepare the England players any better for a World Cup. Festive football is as seasonal as A Christmas Carol and the Queen’s Speech.

From previous blogs (“The Magic of the Cup”) it’s no secret I’m a bit of a traditionalist. But I’m also a realist, so not living an entirely romanticised version of football events. If lessening the fixture congestion served a purpose that enhanced the overall product then I’d be a fan. The truth is that it won’t, nor will it serve the national team in its efforts. The foreign players that compete in the Premier League seem to cope okay in major tournaments. Those partaking in the African Cup of Nations always appear fresh, or certainly no worse off for the endeavour.

Even if I was to accept – hypothetically speaking now – that the winter period drains players come the end of the season, I’d still rather we kept the set-up as it is. If it’s tiring for the players – apparently a modern professional requires 78 hours between games to make a complete recovery, I’m wondering if these figures have been mixed up with common Christmas hangover periods – it’s more tiring for the fan. I spend Christmas Eve tossing and turning in the hope Santa is bringing me presents. That means I’m up early to check if I have been a good boy (only once in living memory was I deemed bad, that was the year I didn’t get a PlayStation 1 but all my mates did) and in bed late that evening (hopefully) celebrating.

It doesn’t stop there. I rarely sleep due to excitement on Christmas night, too. The prospect of a full Premier League fixture list on Boxing Day is enough to keep me awake. I barely get over that before we head to the normal fixtures that week. All the time the New Year’s games are waiting. If new to football the Christmas period would provide the perfect crash course; for veterans it’s the season to be jolly, for sure.

In what has been a great season for the unpredictable, the games squeezed together at the end of December and the start of January will provide us with a marker of how things are likely to go as the league moves into its second half. Eventually form will be established – good or bad – and determine the fate of the teams. December is the start of that new phase.

The December 21st to 23rd games provide the first examination of how the top could go. Arsenal face Chelsea on Monday the 23rd at the Emirates. The Gunners need a win to prove they are genuine contenders and that they can turnover a top side after two defeats in Manchester, albeit one of those Manchester sides is now a mid-table team. Before that we’ll discover if Manchester City’s away form has steadied when they face a Fulham side starting to show signs of life. At the lower end a nervous Sam Allardyce takes his Hammers to Old Trafford. He’ll tell his players a win is possible, and point to United’s home form as proof, but it’s unthinkable that Moyes will face defeat there again so soon.

The Boxing Day games provide further examination of how genuine each team’s league position is. Everton face a stern test at home to a Sunderland side that has just beaten Chelsea in the League Cup. These are the sort of games a team needs to collect three points from if they are serious about securing European football. The aforementioned West Ham face Arsenal at home, by Boxing Day their predicament could have been worsened, Mr Wenger may well have a belated gift Big Sam doesn’t really want.

The tie of the day sees Liverpool travel to the Etihad. City is scoring for fun there at the moment. During the mauling of Arsenal, one fan in earshot jokingly remarked he was upset if they didn’t score five nowadays. At the time City had “only” managed four but his pains were rewarded with a couple more before the final whistle. Liverpool themselves handed Spurs a defeat that demonstrated they were far from being pretenders this year. It’s a shame we’ve been robbed of watching Aguero and Suarez on the same pitch but there’s enough talent to make this a mouth-watering game. If Liverpool take a point in Manchester it’d show they need to be taken seriously; failing that conceding less than five will do.

December 28th/29th matches will see Man City at home against a Crystal Palace side that, with all due respect, they will feel safe rotating players against. Liverpool face another tough away test at Chelsea. West Ham/West Brom; Hull/Fulham; Cardiff/Sunderland are a trio of ties that pit teams in six pointers in the relegation battle. Everton hosting Southampton gives us insight into two teams fighting it out for a top six spot.

The first game of 2014 sees Man City travel to Swansea and in the last game of the day Man United host Tottenham. In between these games clubs in close proximity to one another face-off – Palace/Norwich and Fulham/West Ham – whilst Arsenal and Liverpool will be expected to win their respective home games against Cardiff and Hull Tigers. The biggest factor may well be the strength in the squads rather than the preferred starting eleven.

At the end of this cycle big teams and strugglers alike will have dropped points. The crazy season may finally have started to settle. The teams then don’t play a league game for ten days. By my calculations that’s a big enough gap to squeeze a 78 hour rest in, especially if you want to skip some cup football.

And they say they need a winter break?